“Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.” (International Dyslexia Association-IDA).

Before diving into dyslexia, let's look at the brain systems needed to read fluently.

How Do We Read?

Good readers predominately use their left hemisphere to access reading. The three basic systems needed for reading are shown above: Broca's area (green), Wernicke's area (red), and the occipital temporal word form area (yellow). It is important to note that when children first encounter text, they process it through the right hemisphere, which makes a gestalt or overall picture of the experience. Through text practice, phoneme awareness training, and language enrichment, teachers literally change the brain to bring the print processing to the left hemisphere, which is more adept at processing language and other rule governed information( Linkersdörfer, 2016).

Education also helps children to break the brains' biological wiring for "invariant object recognition," or the brain's natural inclination to recognize an object as the same regardless of the perspective from which the object is observed. It is for this reason that many young children(and older children with dyslexia) create letter reversals, identifying "b" for "d" or "p" for "q." It is not that they see letters differently, they have simply not suppressed this biological wiring yet and learned that orientation matters for letters (Dehaene,2010).

Inside the brain, specific regions are not as discrete and observable at the picture above shows. The brain is actually composed of individual neurons, as pictured below.

Neurons have small gaps between them, and they use chemicals, called neurotransmitters, to communicate with one another. In order to communicate more effectively, our bodies cover the long axonal tails of neurons with myelin. Myelin is a fatty sheath that acts like pavement on a highway or a super-conducter. It allows the neurotransmitters to flow more quickly and easily.

Early brain organization related to reading development includes the increase of myelin connections between the three main areas related to reading, and the pruning of excess neurons to make the connections more directional. In the brain, the myelin looks white, thus it's called the "white matter."

Two main brain connection pathways have been identified in good readers: the arcuate fasiculus (shown in blue below) and the Inferior Longitudinal Fasciculus (ILF) (shown in yellow below).

The arcuate fasiculus connects Broca's area (word forms-semantics, phonological awareness, phonics-orthographic awareness) to Wernicke's area (language comprehension). The ILF connects both these areas to the occipital lobe, which is used to process visual information. As you can see in the picture below, these white matter connections literally look like a road connecting the front and back areas of the brain.

As children age, research shows the arcuate fasiculus and IFL become more directional. Increasing directionality is akin to paving a straight road, rather than having an unpaved dirt road that spills out in some places and wanders in others. Researchers measure these changes through looking at fractional anisotropy (FA), which is a technique that measures the fiber density of neurons, the diameter of the neuronal axons, and the myelination of the neurons.

As shown above, the fractional anistrophy of the arcuate fasciulus and IFL increase with age for both above average readers (shown in black ) and below average readers (shown in grey). Furthermore, the connections for above average readers increase in a linear fashion, while poor readers have more ups and downs in their development. For both groups, development is approximately linear from ages 7-15 years old

Dyslexia: Where is the Breakdown?

In children with dyslexia, their white matter tracks, as described above, are not as directional nor as dense as children with solid reading ability(Zhaoa, 2016).

A 2018 study by Pedro Paz- Alanzo, et. Al. looked specifically at brain activiation under fMRI of 41 participants with dyslexia during a demanding reading task. “Readers with dyslexia exhibited hypo-activation associated with phonological processing in parietal regions; with orthographic processing in parietal regions, Broca's area (pars opercularis and triangularis), vOT and thalamus; and with semantic processing in the AG and hippocampus.” Basically, this study proves that readers with dyslexia have under-active processing in the left hemisphere for the main processing involved in reading: phonological, orthographic, semantic. It’s the strongest evidence to date that shows dyslexia is caused by lack of functional connectivity in the brain, and that students with dyslexia are not efficiently using networks in their left hemisphere to read.

Dyslexia = inefficient processing in the left hemisphere

Remediation?

Research recommends an integrative approach to dyslexia treatment aimed at connecting all networking areas(Kershner, 2016). This includes systematic word study instruction in:

Phonological Awareness

Orthographic Awareness (Phonics)

Vocabulary: Semantics

Morphology: Word Roots, Prefixes, Suffixes

Mental Images of Words: connectionist-mnemonic strategies for memorization of words that do not follow orthographic patterns

Can Instruction Change the Brain?

Yes!

While not with students, one study looked at whether experts in phonetics, as defined by adults with 1-4 years of formal training in phonetics, would have different brain structures than non-experts. Researchers found that yes! Training in phonetics, or sounds, creates changes in white matter fibers in fronto-temporal functional hubs, areas in left-hemisphere that are important for phonetic processing.

In another study that directly assessed the impact of phonics instruction, researchers from Stanford University(Yoncheva & McCadliss, 2017) taught students new words using either a phonics based approach or a whole word approach. Then, they looked at brain wave activity while students were reading these words at a later date. Their research showed that teaching students to read using a phonics based approach activated brain wave activity in the left hemisphere, while teaching using a whole word approach causes activity in the right hemisphere.

Training in sounds and phonics can change the brain, but using a whole word approach keeps processing in the inefficient right hemisphere.

Which Program is Best?

Programs don’t teach kids, teachers do. However, having materials that are grounded in research is crucial.

The best instructional program on the market right now for educators that integrates these areas is called "SPELL-Links" by Learning by Design. "SPELL-Links leverages the brain's innate, biological wiring and organization for oral language. Unlike traditional phonics and word study programs which begin with the written letter and teach students to match the letter to a sound, with SPELL-Links students first learn how to attend to the sound structure of spoken English words and then how to connect and combine sounds, letter patterns, and meanings to read and spell words. This is exactly how the brain works in good readers and writers!"

Things that DO NOT Work

Even though the research is clear about how the brain reads and what works, there are many educators who attempt to help children with dyslexia in others ways. A few things that do not work:

Whole Language Approaches: Whole language comes in many different names. If a child is learning decoding strategies like "look at the picture, skip it and come back, sound it out (with little instruction as to the orthography besides initial sounds, blends, and digraphs), or ask a teacher" and progress is measured by movement on "leveled texts," they are being instructed through a whole language approach. While this may lead to small gains, as part of building the white matter tracks is simply reading more, relying solely on a whole language approach is not best practice for children with dyslexia. For a discussion on this, see here.

Changing Fonts: In 2008 Christian Boer, a Dutch artist, developed a special font ("Dyslexie") to facilitate reading in children and adults with dyslexia. The font has received a lot of media attention worldwide, even though there was no research to support it. So does it work? There are still limited studies on this area. One recent study with only 39 participants shows "that low-progress readers performed better (i.e., read 7% more words per minute) in Dyslexie font than in standardly spaced Arial font. However, when within-word spacing and between-word spacing of Arial font was matched to that of Dyslexie font, the difference in reading speed was no longer significant. It concludes that the efficacy of Dyslexie font is not because of its specially designed letter shapes, but because of its particular spacing settings(Marinus, 2016)."

Color Overlays: Some educators believe that putting different colors over print may help students read. Several studies have proved this false. For example, sixty-one schoolchildren (aged 7-12 years) with reading difficulties were assessed by an Irlen diagnostician. Researchers looked at reading rate across 3 conditions: using an overlay of a prescribed color; using an overlay of a nonprescribed color; and using no overlay. The data concludes that there was no difference across groups in reading rate. (Ritchie, 2011).

Advocating in School

In many public schools, dyslexia is housed under the generic catch-all terms "learning disabilities" or "reading disability." This is not a problem, as long as educators are providing treatment that works.

All students need access to high quality literature. Whole language approaches may be suitable for children with learning disabilities who struggle with reading comprehension, yet possess adequate reading decoding skills. However, whole language is not enough for students who struggle with decoding. Parents and educators alike need to advocate for systematic word study instruction, as this is the most efficient way to change the brain of children with dyslexia.

Some good news is that the Common Core now mandates that schools include systematic word study instruction for all children under the "Reading Foundations" Standards. Here is some information on what these standards look like in practice for Kindergarten:

Spell Talk: Spell Talk is a free international group of reading researchers, teachers, speech language pathologists, and parents sharing resources and ideas about reading. Spell Talk releases weekly research references with the group via a listserve. Members are invited to pose questions to the group on any reading related topic.

During the 2016-17, our NY district secured grant funding to support early intervention in one of our elementary buildings. Under this grant, a speech/language therapist position was added to support kindergarten students' language development.

We chose to use the Kindergarten Language Benchmark Assessment, by Naomi Konikoff, MS CCC-SLP and Jennifer Preschern, MA CCC-SLP, as a universal screening and progress monitoring tool. The KLBA supports the Response to Intervention model. The KLBA monitors the development of early language skills in the areas of: auditory comprehension, following directions, receptive/expressive categories and narrative language. According to current research, each skill assessed highly correlates to future reading success and academic performance. The assessment is designed for monolingual and bilingual kindergarten students 5-6 years of age. According to the manual, the assessment takes approximately 3-4 minutes to administer. The therapist compiles the raw scores and ranks the grade level scores in the fall, winter and spring of each year. Response to Intervention services are planned and implemented based on the scoring patterns and the therapists' clinical judgement. In our building, students who scored within the bottom 20% of the class qualified for tier 2 language services.

This grant position is very unique in that the speech language therapist doesn't currently have a traditional speech/language caseload. The therapist was hired to push into 5 kindergarten classrooms every other day to provide tier 1 language support during learning centers (small group) and provide additional tier 2 support for those students who scored within the bottom 20% of the class as identified by the KLBA. Students receiving tier 2 support services were progress monitored every other week to determine whether they were responding to the language intervention. Students who made progress in tier 2 continued to receive support and those who were not making satisfactory growth were provided with tier 3 support, which looked like traditional speech/language pull-out services. Tier 3 services were normally accompanied by a speech/language evaluation and/or a referral to special education depending on the student’s situation.

With the guidance of Jennifer Preschern, MA CCC-SLP, co-author of the KLBA, we decided to provide tier 1 language support based on the four critical language skills assessed by the KLBA. Students who fell into the bottom 20% of the class received extra language support in small groups every other day.

Our data showed that students who received additional specialized language instruction grew at a faster rate than those who did not. Specialized language instruction is helping to close the language gap.

The feedback from teachers has been positive. They feel as though no one is “falling through the cracks.” From the therapist's perspective there have been many positive outcomes:

The therapist has gained a better understanding of the spectrum of learners in kindergarten

The therapist has an improved connection to the NYS Common Core Curriculum

The KLBA has identified language weaknesses that may have otherwise gone undetected. There are a few cases in which students academic performance appears on or above level, but the KLBA has pinpointed critical weaknesses that will interfere with reading development down the road.

Many students have strengthened crucial foundational language skills by the end of their kindergarten year

The therapist can reinforce speech/language skills throughout the day in the natural setting

Overall, this year was a wonderful success! The KLBA has been an excellent tool to assist us in identifying and monitoring language development in kindergarten. We are anxious to delve into year two!

Lisa Quirk has been speech/language therapist in a public school system in upstate New York since 1999. She holds a masters degree in literacy and has a deep interest in the language/literacy connection. Lisa can be reached at lquirk@carthagecsd.org

Did you know?

The KLBA is sold out of Eastern Illinois University. EIU has been greatly effected by the budget crisis in the state of Illinois. Luckily, every dollar of KLBA sales goes back into research and development for the Speech/Language department, including further development of these tools. Thank you for your support.

Interested in using the KLBA at your school? Jennifer Preschern, MA CCC-SLP from Speech Language Literacy Lab is happy to answer questions. She can be reached at jpreschern@sl3lab.com

“Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.” (International Dyslexia Association-IDA).

Before diving into dyslexia, let's look at the brain systems needed to read fluently.

How Do We Read?

Good readers predominately use their left hemisphere to access reading. The three basic systems needed for reading are shown above: Broca's area (green), Wernicke's area (red), and the occipital temporal word form area (yellow). It is important to note that when children first encounter text, they process it through the right hemisphere, which makes a gestalt or overall picture of the experience. Through text practice, phoneme awareness training, and language enrichment, teachers literally change the brain to bring the print processing to the left hemisphere, which is more adept at processing language and other rule governed information( Linkersdörfer, 2016).

Education also helps children to break the brains' biological wiring for "invariant object recognition," or the brain's natural inclination to recognize an object as the same regardless of the perspective from which the object is observed. It is for this reason that many young children(and older children with dyslexia) create letter reversals, identifying "b" for "d" or "p" for "q." It is not that they see letters differently, they have simply not suppressed this biological wiring yet and learned that orientation matters for letters (Dehaene,2010).

Inside the brain, specific regions are not as discrete and observable at the picture above shows. The brain is actually composed of individual neurons, as pictured below.

Neurons have small gaps between them, and they use chemicals, called neurotransmitters, to communicate with one another. In order to communicate more effectively, our bodies cover the long axonal tails of neurons with myelin. Myelin is a fatty sheath that acts like pavement on a highway or a super-conducter. It allows the neurotransmitters to flow more quickly and easily.

Early brain organization related to reading development includes the increase of myelin connections between the three main areas related to reading, and the pruning of excess neurons to make the connections more directional. In the brain, the myelin looks white, thus it's called the "white matter."

Two main brain connection pathways have been identified in good readers: the arcuate fasiculus (shown in blue below) and the Inferior Longitudinal Fasciculus (ILF) (shown in yellow below).

The arcuate fasiculus connects Broca's area (word forms-semantics, phonological awareness, phonics-orthographic awareness) to Wernicke's area (language comprehension). The ILF connects both these areas to the occipital lobe, which is used to process visual information. As you can see in the picture below, these white matter connections literally look like a road connecting the front and back areas of the brain.

As children age, research shows the arcuate fasiculus and IFL become more directional. Increasing directionality is akin to paving a straight road, rather than having an unpaved dirt road that spills out in some places and wanders in others. Researchers measure these changes through looking at fractional anisotropy (FA), which is a technique that measures the fiber density of neurons, the diameter of the neuronal axons, and the myelination of the neurons.

As shown above, the fractional anistrophy of the arcuate fasciulus and IFL increase with age for both above average readers (shown in black ) and below average readers (shown in grey). Furthermore, the connections for above average readers increase in a linear fashion, while poor readers have more ups and downs in their development. For both groups, development is approximately linear from ages 7-15 years old

Dyslexia: Where is the Breakdown?

In children with dyslexia, their white matter tracks, as described above, are not as directional nor as dense as children with solid reading ability(Zhaoa, 2016).

A 2018 study by Pedro Paz- Alanzo, et. Al. looked specifically at brain activiation under fMRI of 41 participants with dyslexia during a demanding reading task. “Readers with dyslexia exhibited hypo-activation associated with phonological processing in parietal regions; with orthographic processing in parietal regions, Broca's area (pars opercularis and triangularis), vOT and thalamus; and with semantic processing in the AG and hippocampus.” Basically, this study proves that readers with dyslexia have under-active processing in the left hemisphere for the main processing involved in reading: phonological, orthographic, semantic. It’s the strongest evidence to date that shows dyslexia is caused by lack of functional connectivity in the brain, and that students with dyslexia are not efficiently using networks in their left hemisphere to read.

Dyslexia = inefficient processing in the left hemisphere

Remediation?

Research recommends an integrative approach to dyslexia treatment aimed at connecting all networking areas(Kershner, 2016). This includes systematic word study instruction in:

Phonological Awareness

Orthographic Awareness (Phonics)

Vocabulary: Semantics

Morphology: Word Roots, Prefixes, Suffixes

Mental Images of Words: connectionist-mnemonic strategies for memorization of words that do not follow orthographic patterns

Can Instruction Change the Brain?

Yes!

While not with students, one study looked at whether experts in phonetics, as defined by adults with 1-4 years of formal training in phonetics, would have different brain structures than non-experts. Researchers found that yes! Training in phonetics, or sounds, creates changes in white matter fibers in fronto-temporal functional hubs, areas in left-hemisphere that are important for phonetic processing.

In another study that directly assessed the impact of phonics instruction, researchers from Stanford University(Yoncheva & McCadliss, 2017) taught students new words using either a phonics based approach or a whole word approach. Then, they looked at brain wave activity while students were reading these words at a later date. Their research showed that teaching students to read using a phonics based approach activated brain wave activity in the left hemisphere, while teaching using a whole word approach causes activity in the right hemisphere.

Training in sounds and phonics can change the brain, but using a whole word approach keeps processing in the inefficient right hemisphere.

Which Program is Best?

Programs don’t teach kids, teachers do. However, having materials that are grounded in research is crucial.

The best instructional program on the market right now for educators that integrates these areas is called "SPELL-Links" by Learning by Design. "SPELL-Links leverages the brain's innate, biological wiring and organization for oral language. Unlike traditional phonics and word study programs which begin with the written letter and teach students to match the letter to a sound, with SPELL-Links students first learn how to attend to the sound structure of spoken English words and then how to connect and combine sounds, letter patterns, and meanings to read and spell words. This is exactly how the brain works in good readers and writers!"

Things that DO NOT Work

Even though the research is clear about how the brain reads and what works, there are many educators who attempt to help children with dyslexia in others ways. A few things that do not work:

Whole Language Approaches: Whole language comes in many different names. If a child is learning decoding strategies like "look at the picture, skip it and come back, sound it out (with little instruction as to the orthography besides initial sounds, blends, and digraphs), or ask a teacher" and progress is measured by movement on "leveled texts," they are being instructed through a whole language approach. While this may lead to small gains, as part of building the white matter tracks is simply reading more, relying solely on a whole language approach is not best practice for children with dyslexia. For a discussion on this, see here.

Changing Fonts: In 2008 Christian Boer, a Dutch artist, developed a special font ("Dyslexie") to facilitate reading in children and adults with dyslexia. The font has received a lot of media attention worldwide, even though there was no research to support it. So does it work? There are still limited studies on this area. One recent study with only 39 participants shows "that low-progress readers performed better (i.e., read 7% more words per minute) in Dyslexie font than in standardly spaced Arial font. However, when within-word spacing and between-word spacing of Arial font was matched to that of Dyslexie font, the difference in reading speed was no longer significant. It concludes that the efficacy of Dyslexie font is not because of its specially designed letter shapes, but because of its particular spacing settings(Marinus, 2016)."

Color Overlays: Some educators believe that putting different colors over print may help students read. Several studies have proved this false. For example, sixty-one schoolchildren (aged 7-12 years) with reading difficulties were assessed by an Irlen diagnostician. Researchers looked at reading rate across 3 conditions: using an overlay of a prescribed color; using an overlay of a nonprescribed color; and using no overlay. The data concludes that there was no difference across groups in reading rate. (Ritchie, 2011).

Advocating in School

In many public schools, dyslexia is housed under the generic catch-all terms "learning disabilities" or "reading disability." This is not a problem, as long as educators are providing treatment that works.

All students need access to high quality literature. Whole language approaches may be suitable for children with learning disabilities who struggle with reading comprehension, yet possess adequate reading decoding skills. However, whole language is not enough for students who struggle with decoding. Parents and educators alike need to advocate for systematic word study instruction, as this is the most efficient way to change the brain of children with dyslexia.

Some good news is that the Common Core now mandates that schools include systematic word study instruction for all children under the "Reading Foundations" Standards. Here is some information on what these standards look like in practice for Kindergarten:

Spell Talk: Spell Talk is a free international group of reading researchers, teachers, speech language pathologists, and parents sharing resources and ideas about reading. Spell Talk releases weekly research references with the group via a listserve. Members are invited to pose questions to the group on any reading related topic.

If you are working with the school-aged population, you’ve probably heard the term “phonological awareness” quite a bit.

We need phonological awareness to read and write, and training these skills can have a positive impact on the decoding skills of students of all ability levels (Yeh & Connell, 2007). Measuring phonological awareness as early as preschool or Kindergarten can help us predict which students will be stronger readers and who may be at risk (Sprugevica & Hoien, 2003).

Although these skills are critical, many professionals working with school-aged children lack the necessary knowledge of phonological awareness skills (Spencer, Schuele, Guillot, & Lee, 2008)

Before we go any further, let’s test your skills to see where you stand.

How did you do? If you aced the quiz, great job! You’re well on your way!

Here are five important things you need to know.

1. Phonemic awareness and phonological awareness are not the same thing.

Phonemic awareness refers only to the awareness of sounds, also known as phonemes. It’s important to make this distinction so that we know how to move from easier to more difficult phonological awareness skills.

2. Blending and segmentation skills are needed to learn reading and writing.

There are a number of skills that fall under the phonological awareness umbrella; such as phonemeisolation, rhyming, or other phoneme manipulation tasks. Two phonological awareness skills that are critical for reading and writing are blending and segmentation.

Here are some examples of blending and segmentation at the syllable, onset-rime, and phoneme level:

Poor phonological blending and segmentation are red flags for future reading difficulties. However, if we teach students to blend and segment, we can have a positive impact on decoding skills (Schuele & Bodreau, 2008).

Here are some comparisons between phonological segmentation tasks to illustrate this point:

There are other factors that can impact the difficulty of phonological awareness tasks, such as the type of phonemes in words or syllable structure; but these examples can provide a starting point.

4. We learn sounds before letters

Our brains are built in a way that helps us to grasp the spoken sound units in a language. This means children may be able to complete phonological awareness tasks (e.g., segmentation, blending, rhyming) before they learn to read and spell.

For example, children may be able to tell you the word “hat” starts with the “h” sound before they cantell you it starts with the letter H. They may also be able to tell you the sounds in the word are “h…a…t,” before they can spell the word. This means we may want to make sure a student can answer the question, “What sound is at the beginning of hat?” before we ask “What letter is at the beginning of hat?”

5. We need to explicitly tie sounds to written symbols.

Many professionals mistakenly introduce letters or ask students to spell and read “sight words” without drawing attention to the sound units in words. This is problematic because written symbols will lack meaning if we don’t teach students how to associate them with the sounds they are hearing.

What we should be doing is incorporating written symbols into our phonological awareness instruction. Adding emphasize on orthography to our phonological instruction will actually make it more effective than doing phonological awareness without written symbols (Ehri et al., 2001).

One way to do this is to have the students vocalize the sounds in words as they are working on spelling. For example, if a student were writing the word hop, they would say, “h…o…p” as they were writing.

Here’s another simple activity that can help children associate sounds with letters:

Start by drawing one line for every phoneme in a word. Then have students write the letters that correspond with each phoneme on each of the lines. Here are some examples of some CVC words and how they would look after completing this task:

bat: bat

sheep: sh eep

feast: f east

You may have to model this a few times first.

When we draw attention to the sounds in the words, we are helping students understand why words are spelled the way they are using students’ existing phonological awareness skills. If we do this, students will be more likely to remember how to spell and read words

As an SLP, you have extensive knowledge of language and phonology.

This makes you well-equipped to deliver effective phonological awareness instruction. Remember these five things, and you will get your students on the path to success.

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan, Ed.D. CCC-SLP, has been a practicing speech language pathologist since 2004, and has worked in the schools and medical settings with adults and children, has supervised clinical students, and has taught college courses in Special Education and Communication Sciences and Disorders. She currently works in the school systems and runs drkarenspeech.com, a website with innovative resources for treating language disorders with an emphasis on metacognition.

As we have talked with schools around the country about language RTI, the recurring theme is concerns about time. Language RTI should NOT add work to the SLP schedules, it should CHANGE the way the workload is organized.

Dr. Angela Anthony and Jennifer Preschern, MA CCC-SLP from Speech Language Literacy Lab recently had the chance to present on Common Core and language RTI for speechpathology.com. The course is now available on demand and the reviews are excellent. The course includes tons of practical ideas as well as research support. We encourage you to check it out.

SL3 is also sponsoring the ASHA online Language and Literacy conference from August 5-17. In honor of this online event, we are raffling off one Kindergarten Language Benchmark Assessment complete kit. Enter today for your chance to win!

Speech Language Literacy Lab is a proud sponsor of the ASHA Online Language and Literacy Convention from August 5-17th. Participants have the opportunity to earn up to 36 CEUs from the convenience of home. Language and literacy experts from around the country, including Barbara Ehren, Ron Gillam, Julie Masterson, and Marilyn Nippold, will be conducting 1 hour seminars and chat sessions. For more information, please visit the ASHA webpage.

To celebrate, we are hosting a raffle for a FREE Kindergarten Language Benchmark Assessment Complete kit. To enter, please complete the Rafflecopter below. Choose how you would like to enter. Please don't forget to tag tweets to @sl3lab

We are thrilled to announce that the Kindergarten Language Benchmark Assessment(KLBA) is now being offered for sale through Eastern Illinois University. Speech Language Literacy Lab is now a subsidiary of EIU. For information on orders, please visit our website here.

Speech Language Literacy Lab is also a proud sponsor of the ASHA Online Language and Literacy Lab on August 5-17. Participants have the opportunity to earn up to 36 CEUs from top experts around the country. For more information, please visit the ASHA webpage.

As we come to the end of May, I just wanted to send out a big thank you to all our participating bloggers in Speech Language Literacy Lab's RTI and School Based Innovation blog hop. A special thank you to Margaret Warner, the illustrator of our adorable blog hop logo. Margaret was my illustrator at Linguisystems (now Pro-Ed). If anyone needs artwork, she freelances and can be reached at: mwa2808@gmail.com

If you haven't had a chance to read all the blogs yet, here is a link to all the amazing bloggers.

At SL3, we are often asked how to progress monitor students after using our research-based RTI 3x a year language benchmark, the Kindergarten Language Benchmark Assessment. It's easy! The KLBA is based on therapy goals that many therapists already target: auditory comprehension, following directions, categories, and narrative language.

To improve receptive and expressive categorization, one subtest of the KLBA, we created a category domino game freebieon Lesson Pix for our readers.

Some ideas how to use the SL3 Category Game resource:

1. Cut apart all the pictures and have children sort the items by category (food, animal, school supply). Then, re-sort the items by color.

2. Provide students one domino at a time and ask children to provide a rationale why the two are similar (or not).

3. Play Dominos. Students have to connect pictures and describe how the connections are the same.

Convert pictures of your classroom to coloring pages. Have the child practice coloring in pictures while you give directions. For example, color the book under the table red.

Expressive Language: The student will use personal pronouns correctly on 4/5 trials across three consecutive therapy sessions.

Convert pictures of students to sketches. Give a group of students one boy picture and one girl picture. Have students take turns giving each other directions. For example, "Color her shirt blue" Or "Make a line under her nose" or "Give him glasses."

Articulation: Student will use /r/ in connected speech with 80% accuracy when describing pictures scenes containing the target sound and verbal reminders.

Gather things around your tx room that have the target sound. Take a picture and turn it into a coloring sheet. Have the student describe the picture while coloring it, or send the sheet home as homework.

Vocabulary: When provided 2 familiar objects, student will provide one similarity and one difference on 4/5 trials.

Make your student the photographer! Go on a "hunt" and find two items that have similarities. Convert the pictures into coloring pages. During the next tx session, describe the similarities and differences. Discuss how coloring the pages might change this information.

To convert your picture to a coloring page free, go to www.reallycolor.com and enter the code: BLOGHOP until June 15, 2015. Color your world, Really!

We're honored to have the Speech Dudes join us today to share the QUAD Profile Checklist. The QUAD checklist is a

a tool that enables a clinician to perform a simple, rapid evaluation of the language performance of a client who is using an SGD or VOCA. (Cross, 2010 p. 116).

The Speech Dudes blog is one of our favorite blogs. It's a mix of mischief, tips, and speechy humor. We encourage you to check out their other postings. One of our recent laugh out loud favorites is their "Scan Me and See: A New Presentation Technique."

The SL3 team specializes in turning research into practice. Our blog will be sharing current research, as well as ideas for building speech, language, and literacy within therapy sessions and at home. Please contact us if you have feedback on the blog or would like to see a specific topic addressed.